Shoutout to @redclaw38812660 on twitter for the word prompt! The 20 minutes is from the moment I jot down the first word till I write the last. I’ll sit and consider the theme and the visual imagery for some minutes beforehand, oftentimes googling images of the word.
When they finally spoke about it, he had wanted to divorce her for eight years. She had wanted to divorce him for about three, maybe more. Things had gotten in the way. Their teenage children were knee-deep in their own troubles, and his senile mother got cancer and died shortly after. They adopted a third child, but it was a poor attempt at a bandaid that didn’t heal the wound it so faithfully protected. There was no good time to talk about it, so they waited.
I waited, too, thinking there was something for me to do.
I’m still thinking.
A.R.Frederiksen 